In Parshas Chukas, Moshe sent emissaries to Edom, requesting that Bnei Yisrael traverse through their land on their way to Canaan, which Edom decline. Throughout the parsha of sending emissaries, the pasuk alternates between Moshe and Bnei Yisrael as having sent them (21:21 and onwards).
Rashi there explains that the pasuk is demonstrating that the leader is like the entire nation - שמשה הוא ישראל, וישראל הם משה, לומר לך שנשיא הדור הוא ככל הדור.
The Maharal points out a difficulty here. Rashi in Yisro (Shemos 18:1) writes that Moshe is equal to the whole Yisrael.
If this is so, how can we then extrapolate from Moshe to all leaders, that they are like the entire nation, if he was by definition different and greater than they could ever hope to be?
R’ Yehoshua Hartman explains that Moshe being parallel to Yisrael isn’t literal. To illustrate: if he were to eat, they wouldn’t all have to bentch afterwards.
The leader is an emissary, a representative of his people. Moshe was more, in that his being equal meant his actions carried the same weight as the nation itself. Sending emissaries is an act of any leader as a representative, and it is in this regard that we can deduce from Moshe to other leaders.
There is an idea in Chazal that Moshe could have utilised “אָנֹכִי הֹ’ אֱלֹהֶיךָ” as a defence for Bnei Yisrael at the Golden Calf, in that it was only said to Moshe, in the second person singular, so technically, Bnei Yisrael had not violated אָנֹכִי הֹ’ אֱלֹהֶיךָ.
How is this possible?
R’ Hartman explains that the Maharal says that the Patriarchs didn’t receive Torah because they had no nation to speak of. They were individuals, and individuals die. The Torah is eternal, so must be given to a nation, as nations do not fade and die e the way an individual does. An individual represents only potential, whereas a nation has actualised it.
So how could Moshe, an individual, say that he received it alone?
Moshe was a microcosm of Yisrael. There were the 600,000 people at Sinai, and then Moshe, who represented their essence.
Whatever made Yisrael into Yisrael at Sinai, Moshe already was. (This is why his grave is unknown). He was saying that the qualities of Yisrael at Sinai that he represented were not guilty of the Golden Calf, that the people were not the very selves that had accepted it, and as such only he could be said to have heard it, exonerating the Bnei Yisrael.
Moshe was the pinnacle of Yisrael, and represented all that was good in the people of those days. It was in that capacity that he received and delivered the Torah, and the people he represented were not the self-same people who were guilty of the Golden Calf, and thus, the people who succumbed at the Golden Calf ought not to be held guilty at all..